FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF...
Tradition

Our general councils, with a few rare exceptions, vote, left, right and centre, addresses of congratulations to the French government. These are the same general councils that, in previous years, voted the same congratulations to a government similar to today's, but a little different, all the same.

There were some good people who were surprised by this phenomenon and wondered how, with the differences in political temperature, the departmental barometer could remain constantly invariable.
To this astonishment, which reveals a lot of candour, an honourable radical senator, Mr Pajot, has just provided the expected response at the General Council of Cher.

It is tradition, he stated, to vote an address of confidence in the government, whatever it may be.
On this, his colleagues bowed. Which would tend to prove that in the minds of these wise men who make up the Departmental Assemblies, governmental changes have only relative importance. Whether X... or Z... are in power, nothing has changed. Neither will do better or worse.
But is that really the thinking of these wise representatives?

Tradition, said the senator. Indeed! Look at the parliamentary majorities. With a few exceptions, they remain, immutably, compact and governmental.
Take the mainstream press. It admits, with a loyalty that honors its convictions, to be unfailingly governmental. To be governmental, in our sweet country, is the last word in human wisdom. This can be translated as follows: one must always place oneself on the side of the handle.

We may have our own ideas and our own particular views on the best way to govern a people, and on the policy that suits French citizens, but the fact remains that the only, the true, the good government is the one that is in place. If it disappears, it is the government that succeeds it, even if it is absolutely contrary to it, that immediately becomes the best.

We must be careful not to let this excellent tradition be lost. We must also preserve the glorious tradition of the opposition.
Because the opposition, too, does not change. Whatever the government, it remains the opposition.
Thus, the balance is never broken. Every government is assured of finding its faithful majority, which was that of the former government, and its small opposition, which will serve it the same unpleasant things that it served to the government of yesterday.

Within governments themselves, this kind of logic retains its rights. We can see this or that minister who, the day before, a Clemenceauist, a Poincarist, a Millerandist, and whatever else you want to call him, does not hesitate at all to accept a portfolio in a combination totally different from the previous ones.

The time to change jackets, to display another label, to renew the stock of formulas and the trick is done.

We do not always give the same piece. But it is almost always the same ones who play, always the same ones who applaud, always the same ones who whistle.

SIRIUS.